diy, belinda, and me

Whoa. It’s been a loooong time since I’ve stepped foot here, so to speak. Part of that is because I’ve been journaling for real, like with a pen and paper. I started the first of the year and have faithfully done it before bed every night. I started that kind of journaling when I was in first grade and have treasured it, but neglected it for a long time. I decided to go “off grid” so that I could be more open and honest about my feelings. Most of the time it’s just about what happened in my day, nothing super exciting. But I enjoy the way it helps me reflect on some of the things that happened or how I was feeling. Nice to put it down in writing.

So life is really good right now. We’re in an awesome season and rhythm of our lives. I’m really happy. We recently had a few serious discussion about finances and it encouraged me. We don’t fight about money because we’ve been doing a budget for about 5 years now. It’s worked very well for us, even if we don’t stick to it 100%. We decided to make a few needed changes and I am so happy that we’re on the same page with this stuff. So many couples fight about money but we don’t have that problem. He keeps me in line if I want to get something I shouldn’t, and I do the same for him. It’s nice to not feel stress or anger about that very important part of our lives.

We did Whole30 last year and I discovered that I’m mostly lactose intolerant. This saddens me a little because I really like cheese. However, I have been vegetarian for a while now and I have been thinking about going more or less vegan. This kind of forced my hand. I still have milk with my cereal (which is weird because that’s almost the only way I have any milk, I’ve never enjoyed just having a cup of milk; also it’s weird because you’d think the lactose in milk would bother me. oh well) but I can’t really do ice cream and I definitely cannot do cheese. This has forced me to try cheese alternatives. But I probably would have done that anyway because that’s how I am.

My parents got us a Vitamix (who I’ve christened Belinda the Blenda) for our anniversary last year and making vegan cheeses and nut milks has really put Belinda to work. I found this great article and have been working through the recipes in the list. Some of the links are broken, but most are not. I’ve tried quite a few and most of them have been quite tasty. Conveniently so far, all the cheese I’d make again are the easier ones. I have actually made some of them more than once at this point. It makes me happy to find things that I can make that will replace my cheese love.

Also, I made some things that I want to share here, in separate posts. I’m excited to share them and more excited to be back. I do still plan on posting more for the Bible and Cream Puffery. And that’s another big reason I haven’t written, because I felt like I couldn’t until I wrote that first. I’ve finally come to be okay with delaying that until it’s ready, but still writing here about other things. I’m doing some more reading and reflecting for those posts, but they’re not ready yet.